Here are 3 different punch recipes you could choose from. These punches are topped with floating slices of star fruit. They can remind you of the star that outshined the rest the night Jesus was born.

Each punch recipe makes about a gallon. If you have a gallon pitcher, you could try out the recipe in advance to see how you like it and whether you want to tweak it. Punch in a punch bowl gets stirred a little as each person serves up a cupful. If you store some in a pitcher in the refrigerator, you will probably need to stir it before you drink some.

Experts say you should trim off the brown edges of the tips of a star fruit with a vegetable peeler. Cut the ends of the star fruit off and discard. I make the slices about ¼” thick. Use the tip of a knife to take out the seeds. The second time I went to buy a star fruit at the store where I shop each week, I was surprised to see that the price of a star fruit had skyrocketed. Hopefully that won’t be the case for you. Oh, well . . . Christmas only comes once a year. You shouldn’t need more than one star fruit. You could just put a few slices in the punch at a time, in case one of the guests decides to eat some. I suppose it would be a little tacky to put up a sign that says, “Please don’t eat the star fruit.”

For deciding how much punch you will need, one party website had some suggestions. It said that most guests will drink about two glasses of punch in the first hour of the party and one glass every hour after that. You need to take into account the size of your punch cups.

TIP – If you want your ice to last longer, you can use a muffin tin instead of an ice tray. They melt more slowly and keep the punch cold for a longer time. You should be able to get the ice chunks out of the tin by dipping the tin in a pan with some warm water in it. If you want to get a head start on the ice for your next batch and you need to empty the tin, you could put the frozen chunks in a zip-lock bag.

You need not have a punch bowl. A large, pretty, transparent salad bowl will do the trick. You could fill a gallon jug with water once or a 64-oz. juice bottle twice (plus 2 cups to compensate for the ice) and dump the water into the bowl, to see if your bowl will accommodate a gallon of punch. Of course you will need a suitable ladle with a handle long enough so that it won’t slide down into the punch. That would not be a pretty sight.

Recipes here